Some vendors would be paid over time, and some claims were still disputed.

But payroll was moving and crews were back on active sites.

He sounded like a man who had been holding his breath for months.

“Forty teams won’t have to tell their families the job disappeared today,” he said.

“That’s the part of this I needed to hear,” I answered.

The forensic accounting reports took longer.

They were methodical, dull, and devastating.

An examiner identified transactions routed through vendors with no verifiable work product.